Modern vehicles contain an increasing number of sensors for detecting a range of environmental and vehicle parameters. In particular, vehicles utilizing sensors for self-driving and active safety rely heavily on various sensors of different types to control vehicle behavior.
However, in a vehicle driving over a rough road surface which may comprise pot holes, rough asphalt, unpaved roads, gravel roads, snow, cobblestone, etc., disturbances are introduced in vehicle and sensors. Such disturbances may in turn lead to erroneous readings from the sensors.
By detecting such road surfaces using existing vehicle dynamics sensors together with software and algorithms, vehicle systems can compensate for the disturbances and provide a better functionality. Road roughness information can for example be provided to a vehicle suspension system. Moreover, information regarding road disturbances like frost heaves and pot holes may be of interest by road maintainers, to improve road quality and to avoid accidents.
U.S. Pat. No. 9,108,640 discloses a system where four vertical displacement sensors, one for each wheel, are added to the shocks and thereby used to detect vertical movement of the wheel and in that way, determine and report road quality using a vehicle GPS.
However, an improved system and method for identifying road properties is still desirable.